Stephen Miller is only 38 years old. He sounds like somebody’s crotchety old grandfather there, living in some pre-1960s world. I suppose he’s speaking to the aging Fox boomer audience but I hate to tell him, purple and pink hair and piercings and tattoos have been around for decades now.
We’ve been hearing an awful lot about appropriate dress and proper decorum from Republicans lately. But seriously, don’t you think they should take a look in the mirror?
How about whatever this is?
Let’s just say that the left doesn’t have a monopoly on wild hairdos and garish fashion.
And those Fox News boomers need to take an extra dose of their Prevagen. This is from 1972:
Miller’s idea seems to be that liberals and progressives are out of step with mainstream America but that requires a very creative definition of mainstream. Here’s how the dictionary defines it:
having, reflecting, or being compatible with the prevailing attitudes and values of a society or group
To put this into political terms, all you have to do is look at the popular vote counts since 2016 to see where the mainstream of America really is.
Not that this is anything new. Hippie bashing has always been one of their standard go-to insults and since they have abandoned all sense of sense of shame and no longer reside on planet earth they can say anything and their people will nod their heads in agreement.
This is what they see as upstanding behavior from the kind of people who make this country great:
When they say that the left doesn’t feel joy and wants everyone to suffer, what they mean is that they don’t enjoy lynching. That’s what they consider fun:
Back when I first started this site, over 20 years ago, I said I wanted to document the atrocities. At the time we were engaged in the “war or terror” and the prevailing attitude in America was that we need to “hit them back,” the same way that the townsmen go out and kill a bear, any bear, in the wake of an bear attack. It was horrifying but it was recognizable phenomenon.
What’s happening now, 20 years later has scholars all over the world scratching their heads trying to define exactly what’s going on. There’s plenty of historical data on the rise of fascism and the decline of democracy but this particular toxic mix of modern media, conspiracy theories and celebrity worship is a peculiarly American recipe for the right’s authoritarian movement. I wish I could say that it’s dissipating but it doesn’t seem to be, Trump or no Trump.
It’s going to be a long year, everyone. I know that many of you would rather stick chopsticks in your ears than hear another word from Trump and his henchmen and they’re going to be everywhere this year. But I hope you will come by here from time to time as we try to find the most informative of their grotesque utterings and synthesize them for you so you’ll be able to follow the conversation without having to mire yourself in the muck of the Trump campaign. (And if you want a respite from all of it, you’ve always got the Friday Night Soother with adorable animals and fell good stories and my old pal Dennis Hartley’s Saturday Night movie and music post to take your mind off the hellscape of our political culture. )
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Happy Hollandaise everyone!